Building Resilient Voices: A Conceptual Framework for Culturally Responsive SEL

Introduction

Three people approach each other in a hallway; one offers a handshake, the other a hand-salute, and the last a dap. Each walks away with a sense of recognition and respect. The notion of social-emotional development being foundational to a holistic education is becoming more mainstream (Ready to lead), and, as such, the question of ensuring that the practice of culturally sustaining social-emotional learning is increasing in urgency. In today’s political, racial, and social climate in the United States, it is pivotal that students experience explicit instruction in both citizenship development and social-emotional learning (SEL) as channels for academic and social success (Hatchimonji, Linsky, & Elias, 2017; Pace, 2015).

Additionally, there has been an abundance of research that supports the effectiveness of schoolwide SEL systems in urban schools for students of color (Hamedani & Darling-Hammond, 2015; Kendziora & Yoder, 2016). SEL interventions in urban schools increase student academic achievement, behavior, self-efficacy, and lower stress and depression (Durlak et al., 2011). However, effective SEL programs in urban schools must be facilitated with fidelity and sustainability for diverse student populations (Barnes, 2019). If not promoted from a culturally sustaining approach, SEL programs in schools may inadvertently be used as a way to control versus empower, deter versus develop, and ultimately undermine our students’ cultural grounding (Lauricella, Valdez, Okamoto, Helm, & Zaremba, 2016). To ensure the best outcomes for all students, culturally sustaining approaches to social-emotional learning several principles should be incorporated.

Culturally sustaining SEL focuses on the “why” before the “what.” Handshakes, hand salutes, and daps are all ways of exchanging respect through greeting (Schleincher, 1997). Across cultures, negotiating respect is an essential notion of developing and maintaining relationships (Brown & Levinson, 1987). Culturally sustaining SEL focuses on the why of the skill and helps students to translate the different looks of the “what” in various contexts.

Culturally sustaining SEL places teacher interactions, not a curriculum, at the core of addressing student’s needs. Until instruction around principles of social-emotional development becomes standard fare in pre-teacher and administrator programs. As a result, curriculum is an invaluable tool to generate exposure to SEL concepts and create a common language in the classroom and the school (Schonert-Reichl, Hanson-Peterson, & Hymel, 2015). However, the curriculum can never substitute for teachers who self-model social-emotional competence and join their students on their journey of social-emotional development (Usher & Pajares, 2006). Culturally responsive SEL is rarely about “you” and almost always about “we.”

Culturally sustaining SEL engages the community, but creating a community is no easy task. Despite different ages, cultures, and priorities, community members must come together to establish and model shared ways of being. Communities thrive when their members are skilled in ways of relating to themselves and others in a way that fosters constructive problem solving and effective decision making (Jagers, Rivas-Drake, & Borowski, 2018). Culturally responsive SEL recognizes that schools are part of a larger ecosystem of families, civic organizations, faith-based communities that support the social-emotional development of young people (National Commission on Social Emotional and Academic Development, 2019).